Steve McCurry

Steve in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, 1979. McCurry lived among the people for 2 years at a time when westerners were prohibited from traveling there {much less takingf photojournalistic images). He was forced to smuggle the photos he'd taken during that period out of the country by having the film canisters sewn into his garments prior to leaving.

The destruction of World Trade Center, Tower 1. Photographed from a roof at Washington Square Park and Fifth Avenue, NYC September 11, 2001. Building 7 can be seen in the foreground

His family is poor, his clothes used. But 15-year-old Ali Aqa isn't deterred: He plans to be a lawyer. Childhood memories include Taliban occupation of his village in Bamian. "They burned everything, even my school," he says. "I pray to God no regime comes like that again." Bamian, Afghanistan. 2007

Shwedagon, Pagoda, Burma, Myanmar, Rangoon, Yangon, February, 2010.

Girlhood: Zinet (16) helps her father to thresh wheat in a field in Wollo, Ethiopia. She is no longer in school because of her father's abduction of her, a year ago. Teenage girls in Ethiopia have the burden of rape, abduction and genital cutting to contend with alongside average coming of age difficulties.